Informative Blog Post

Word Count and Research Sources

• 500 Words

• 2 Primary Sources from Different Perspectives

• 2 Secondary Journalistic Sources

• In-Text Citations

• Works Cited Page

Essential Competencies

These are the fundamental skills I'm measuring:

• Social Responsibility: Tell us about a social issue, and then describe why different people see the issue differently.

• Problem Solving and Critical Thinking: Develop your own thoughts in response to your research.

Learning Outcomes

These are the measures I'll use to grade your papers:

Practice Effective Research

Show that you are able to find and use reliable sources:

• Provide Relevant First-Hand Primary Sources: Provide two primary sources that directly describe your topic.  These can be interviews, video footage, speeches, or similar.

• Use Reliable Journalistic Sources: Provide two secondary sources that follow good journalistic practice.  This does not mean the sources need to agree — just that they follow accepted standards of editorial independence and consistent fact checking.  These must come from established media sources — you are writing a blog article, but you must use better sources than blogs, social media posts, or anything else that has a single author without editorial checks.

Discuss Texts from Muliple Perspectives

Interpret your primary sources using the information you've found from your secondary sources.  Tell us why your primary agree or disagree.

• Commentary on Primary Sources: Show us how different people perceive your topic.  Tell us how your two primary sources differ in their purposes and opinions, and then use the secondary sources to help us understand the background behind these primary sources.

• Clear Indication of Research Versus Opinion: I encourage you to have and share opinions in this article — your opinions make your writing unique.  You also need to tell us which opinions are present in your primary sources.  The key is to add the research to show why you and others hold specific opinions.

Document Source Material

Make sure your readers can tell which information came from outside sources and which information came from your personal thoughts.  This assignment gets us closer to MLA-standard citation:

• Cite Your Sources in the Text:  Your in-text citations need to indicate which information came from which source.  Any outside fact or quote that you looked up must be cited in that same paragraph so that we know which outside author or article provided you with that information.

• Provide Source Details in the Works Cited Page: At a minimum, your Works Cited page needs to show us the author, article title, container, and URL for each source.  You may also add the date or follow full MLA citation guidelines, but this assignment focuses on the basic information for each source.

Research Example: How Students View College

In this example, I'll look at two perspectives on college: a student who sees college as a way to explore knowledge, and another who follows this path simply for a career.  My goal here is to talk about different reasons why these students have such different thoughts on school.

As a college professor, I have my own thoughts on this, but I need to ensure that I'm showing outside perspectives.  The goal of research is not to simply repeat what you already believe — it's to find new ideas that you weren't aware of, engage with perspectives different from your own, and the explain your best interpretation of the world incorporating these new ideas.

Pre-Research Process: Personal Preconceptions

I'm writing this section of the example before start the research process for this example.  As a professor, I've met many, many students over the years.  It's easy for me to think that I understand my students, but that's not necessarily the case.  Teaching a class is much, much different from taking a class.  So I need to check my preconceptions at the door.

First, understand yourself — both your biases and your limitations.  I'm a professor, and I love learning things — always have.  So I try to introduce material in my classes that will be interesting for my students.  But some students are really just focused on getting ahead in life.  For them, college is about the career path — and a class like mine might feel like pointless distraction.  As a writer who loves that "pointless" knowledge, I need to understand why some students are so much more career-focused than I am.  That doesn't mean I'm going to change my own approach to college and teaching — but if I'm going to understand my topic and my students, then I owe it to everyone to understand why some students view college differently than I do.

Next, look for sources to fill in your own gaps.  I'm a child of the 1980s — I didn't grow up with the internet.  When I went to college, email was new — and I found it highly annoying.  And those professors who used Blackboard?  Ick.  I wanted all the key concepts to show up in class or the assigned reading.  Clearly, the world has changed — and I need to ensure my sources are students from today.  And we're not talking students from 2015 — I need to find the voices of college students who've grown up with Covid and AI.

(Not to future students: this example may seem hopelessly outdated by 2035!  Assuming college hasn't been entirely replaced by AI-powered learning modules by then . . . 🙄)

Research: Secondary Sources

Now comes the research.  In this section, I'm talking through my personal process for this topic.  Since the assignment requires journalistic sources, I decided to start with those.  I require those because I want everyone to have a solid baseline of knowledge on their topics — the kind of baseline you might not get from a primary source.

I started with the Google search "how do students view college?"  I just wanted a baseline, and I figured I would get a few news articles.  And I was wrong.

I ignored the AI Overview.  It's hard, since that's the first thing Google gives us, but I scrolled past it.  I don't trust the AI here because it isn't looking for specific perspectives.  AI provides an average amalgamation of perspectives from across the internet — and some of those sources might not be college students.  For this research, I want specific (and real!) students who are living through college.

That first Google search was not super helpful for this assignment.  I got a bunch of primary sources from organizations that talk about the college experience.  Nothing wrong with that, but these sources are biased in the same way that I am — they're written by professors, administrators, and other well-meaning adults who've already been through college.

So I tried again with an NPR search.  National Public Radio is one of my most trusted journalistic sources — they regularly vet their sources for accuracy and perspective.  I typed in "npr what do students think about college" and immediately got "Teens are losing interest in school, and say they hear about college 'a lot'" by Cory Turner.  The article is from August 2024 — recent enough for what I'm looking for, but looking at students from middle school and high school.  And it's only a four-minute listen — not a very long sources, though it does give some excellent graphs.

Another source in the list looks more useful: "People say college doesn't matter.  They're right and wrong" by Brittany Luse et al (see transcript).  This gets at the heart of my topic.  Of course I think college matters — but many people do not.  If I want to fully understand this topic, then I need those perspectives that I disagree with.  But when I checked the source, it's not exactly what I'm looking for.  It's more of roundtable discussion where panelists consider how different groups of Americans view colleges.

The next source is more promising: "More young people are questioning the value of college, some universities are rethinking liberal arts programs" by Kirk Carapezza.  And the intro is the reality that traditional colleges struggle with every day: a university "is revamping it's humanities offerings to focus on preparing its students for the workforce."  That's what I want to explore — to what degree is college about learning, and to what degree is it about finding a career?  I mean, sure, I think that both these aspects of college are important, but not everyone does.  But again, this source is primarily from the perspective of colleges rather than college students.

I tried a few more searches.  I thought the terms "do students go to college for a career or personal enrichment" would be promising, and then I clicked the News tab on Google Search, but then Google mostly gave me links to college websites.  The "news" Google provided were basically press releases from different schools.  But I don't want what the colleges are saying — I want what the students are saying.

So, what do I do?  I'm going to work with those NPR sources I found.  They may not be the student perspectives I'm looking for, but they do offer the overview I need.  And remember: the secondary sources are only for the background information.  I still need actual college students for my primary sources.

Research: Finding Primary Sources

For this search, I'm using search terms that focus on student-produced sources.  Again, I started with the source type: "blog student talks about college."  I wanted to find recent blog articles by students, and I found some, but nothing specifically about careers versus enrichment.  Also, most of the blogs I found are posted to university websites — and this could mean those stories had been chosen to highlight the positives of those colleges rather than help us honestly understand the struggle of the college experience.  I'm not that is the case, just that's it's possible.

Next, time to go more specific: I googled "blog college student career versus personal enrichment."  And what did I get?  More college websites.

Let's try with Reddit: "reddit my experience in college."  The posts sound more authentic, but I'm not seeing a lot of detail.  Also, I wasn't specific enough.  Trying "reddit do you go to college for a career or experience" gave far more precise answers to my topic, but the posts I found didn't go into enough detail to give me a sense of what a specific college student feels.  Also, the anonymity of Reddit meant I couldn't tell what age ranges were represented.

Next, YouTube.  "youtube what I'm studying in college" gave me some sources from college students, but also a lot of sources giving advice to college students.  But I did find one where a future college student described his thought process in choosing his future career and how he chose a major: "WHAT AM I STUDYING AT YALE!?" by Josh Beasley.  Now, the source is from eight years ago, so pre-Covid, but it is a source from the students own YouTube channel.  With the search "youtube why I chose my major," I found a more recent video "Why I chose my major in college" by Morgan Lopez — a second-year student at RIT when she posted this video two years ago.

Research: From Reading to Writing

Now, I've already spent a lot of time scanning through webpages and looking for sources, and I've found that I'm not getting the results I want with Google.  But I do need to get this example done, so I'm going to work with what I have.  The videos by Josh Beasley and Morgan Lopez are true primary sources from student perspectives, and they do talk at length about choosing majors in relation to thinking about their future careers.  I can use that information to write a good example.  These are not the exact sources I was looking for, and that's okay!